At least one Palestinian killed in Gaza air strike

GAZA, Sep 6 (Reuters) At least one Palestinian was killed and two other people were wounded in an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip today after Israeli missiles killed four militants, witnesses said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said an Israeli air strike had targeted two armed gunmen who were close to the security fence with Israel, north of the Sufah crossing.

''An Israeli force was operating close to the fence and they (the gunmen) were nearing the fence,'' she said.

Palestinian witnesses said the explosion rocked the courtyard of a residential house in the village of Khuvaa.

The dead and wounded were members of the same family and were not militants, one of the wounded said.

Residents in Khuvaa said after the air strike that an Israeli force operating around the village had arrested the head of the village municipality, Kamal Annajar, during a raid.

Annajar was also a local Hamas leader, they added. The Israeli military said it was checking the report.

Hours earlier in separate air strikes on two vehicles, Israeli aircraft killed four members of militant group Hamas in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, the Israeli military and witnesses said, ratcheting up violence in the coastal strip. A further 20 people were wounded in the attacks.

Israel has pressed an offensive in the Gaza Strip for more than two months to try to recover a soldier who was abducted in a cross-border raid and to try to put a stop to rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed, about half of them civilians.

Reuters KR VP0930